Dynamically setting field requirement levels in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

In Dynamics CRM you may have a field you want to be required some of the time, but not required, or maybe not even enabled, the rest of the time. In this post I'll show you how to dynamically enable/disable and set/unset the required attribute of CRM form fields using JavaScript.

Let's say you have a delivery restaurant that sells pizza and wings. You could store the order attributes in CRM on a custom DeliveryOrder entity. You could have a picklist to represent the order type, pizza or wings, and you could store the pizza toppings in a text field. If the order type is pizza, you want to require something be entered in the toppings field. If the order type is wings, you don't want to even allow an entry in the toppings field.

More...

The problems with xRM

For the past year or so, I've been hearing the Microsoft Dynamics CRM community talking about the concept of xRM. Supposedly xRM is the idea that you can do all sorts of custom development on top of the MS CRM platform instead of using it just for traditional CRM kinds of tasks.

To that I say, "big deal."

To clarify, I think that using MS CRM as a platform for custom development is generally a good thing. I started doing it with CRM 3.0 back in 2006, and today my company runs almost entirely on top of a heavily customized MS CRM 4.0 installation - sales/customer service/commissions receipts/contract management/etc., but I still hate the idea of xRM for four reasons.
More...